The Assassin's Song (6 page)

People came on foot, and by taxi, rickshaw, and camel or bullock cart, bringing a burst of colour at the gate, for mostly they came dressed respectfully in their better clothes. And when they passed him, Ramdas would greet them from his stall, offering flowers and chaddars; he sold, besides, unauthorized pictures of the Pir, in all sizes, mounted or otherwise; the sufi, presented sideways, was fair and pink with a pointed face and a short, pointed goatee; he wore a green turban and a blue robe; his eyes were a brownish green and gazed into the distance. A radio behind the shopkeeper played the livelier varieties of religious songs. Many of our pilgrims were from away, having been recommended to take their desires to the famous sufi Nur Fazal, the Wanderer of Pirbaag. This would not be their last stop at a holy place, but here they were, their hope, their desperation, their grief written on their faces.

As they entered through the tall archway of the public access way, their eyes would without fail seek out the mausoleum on the right, to which they would drift, before stopping a modest distance away, and then they would say their silent salaams and namaskars to the Pir. Following this they would turn and walk around, pay their respects at the graves of the lesser saints, and hear about a miracle or two relating to the shrine, before slipping off their shoes and venturing up the steps to the verandah of the mausoleum and stepping over the threshold into the inner room that was the sanctuary, to beseech for whatever it was they needed.

The raised grave of the Pir lay in the middle of the sanctuary, surrounded by a low lattice barrier of marble. It had a finish of carved inlaid wood at the top, which was rarely seen because layers of red and green chaddars covered it, the latter embroidered with the Islamic crescent and Arabic text in glittering silver and gold; an abundance of fresh flowers was spread out on the chaddars. At the head of this lush, colourful bed was a kingly crown of dark silver. Behind it stood the eternal lamp shining the light of the sufi. For centuries it had burned there of its own divine energy, consuming neither oil nor wick.

Saturday morning, having played for a while, or read about the world, or studied, or listened on the sly to a cricket commentary on the radio— and consequently with a pang of guilt—I would eventually arrive in the compound, which would be abuzz with the steady, intriguing murmur of worshippers, and sit away in a corner on one of the ancient and less visited graves of some ancestor or holy man, vaguely aware that I was the future master of this place. It took me a couple of minutes, perhaps, to orient myself to the scene before me, and as I continued to observe I would begin to imagine the dramas in the lives of these people that had brought them to seek help. The well-fed man in a suit, looking humbled as he emerged from the mausoleum … surely had neglected his parents in pursuit of wealth; the young unhappy woman, avoiding others' eyes as she walked about listlessly … Pir Bawa help me … what could ail someone like her? Spoilt by a badmaash man, as Ma would say. And the well-dressed city adolescent with his domineering mother could only be on his way overseas … to England, where else? Such is sansara, as Bapu would say, life and the endless quest for solutions. The smallpox lady, her dark face covered in pustules, her grey eyes staring vacantly ahead: what could the Pir give her?

She too had come for a miracle. And the man with no legs, his stump of a body tied to a mat, on which he moved about briskly propelling with his hands. A frequent visitor, Pran Nath. The Pir was not helping him, and for good reason, for he was a busybody and gossip, flitting hither and thither like a fly searching for feed.

And there went the thin man from Goshala with the blue handkerchief tied round his head, circumambulating the mausoleum in his rapid, jerky walk, his eyes humbly directed to the ground before him; he came without fail every fourth week, and walked without pause from ten in the morning to two, in a thin, elliptical orbit. And did eight miles, as I once estimated. When he had finished he would step inside the mausoleum, and when he emerged, Ma would have water fetched for him. Another devotee of Pir Bawa. But I knew his story, so I convinced myself; he was a man whose son or daughter had been saved by the Pir from the very jaws of death, and this severe ritual was what he had promised in return. He would continue it till the day he died.

Sometimes Harish or Utu would come over and sit beside me, and I would tell them these stories, with all the authority of someone privy to special knowledge, an inner voice. I sensed the envy in their eyes as I sat there, a prince viewing the domain I would inherit, when their own world was so ordinary, so dreary. What did Harish have to look forward to? A tire-repair shop? And Utu? A flower stall?

Occasionally I would be pressed into service as a sevak, a volunteer to assist the visitors from abroad, to tell them about the history, the miracles.

“At this spot under a neem—no, not this one, forgive me, but its predecessor—sat a group of Lohana farmers from Jamnagar who were on their way to Kashi for pilgrimage and had stopped to rest. Pir Bawa— Mussafar Shah—he has many names, as you know—made them welcome. They were given food. He noticed that they were very tired, and an old woman among them was about to die. Pir Bawa thereupon asked them where they were headed with a dying woman. They gave him their answer, and Pir Bawa replied, ‘Do you think this sick woman will make it all the way to Kashi?’ ‘No, Guru-ji,’ they replied. ‘We might have to take her ashes only.’ And Pir Bawa said, ‘I will take all of you to Kashi myself.’ And he did, right there. They gathered around him and closed their eyes as bid, and next they were in the holy city, beside the holy river. They bathed
in the Ganga, paid their respects at the temples, and when they opened their eyes they were back at Pirbaag. Right here. The halwa they had received from the temples was beside them. And Pir Bawa himself was sitting in their midst. The pilgrims fell at his feet. ‘Show us your path, Guruji, you are truly the saviour,’ they said.

“Now this area with the marble slabs on the ground—you can read the names, sir, and some of the dates are recent, others are ancient. They commemorate the prominent people of the community. That one there says ‘Dargawalla,’ it is where the ashes of the last Saheb are buried. He was my grandfather …

“And this, madam, is where Pir Bawa lay before he died. This here is the gaadi, his throne—this is where he will sit when he returns.

“No, I will not accept money, sir, but you can put a donation in the chest in the Pir Bawa's mausoleum when you go in. And don't forget the eternal flame there, which has been burning by itself for seven centuries, an ongoing miracle in the twentieth century that defies scientists from America itself ! And there is also another chest near the entrance for the upkeep of this shrine.”

This was the money that fed our family, that sent me to school. I knew it, this basic mundane fact of our existence, how could I not? Yet that knowledge did not properly sink in for many years; the community and history, and the memory of the sufi, were what we lived on.

My English, thus demonstrated, was always a source of admiration. “Arré Kaniya, tari Angrezi kevi sari!” What English! And you learned it at St. Arnold? My friends of course went to the local Gujarati public school down the road, with all the levels, one to seven, packed inside one cacophonous classroom.

Almost unnoticed, my father would have arrived on the pavilion, the cement porch that adjoined our house and faced the graves and the visitors like a stage, sitting on his chair and attended by a handful of volunteers, all attired in spotless white. The women, if there were any, wore saris; the men wore dhotis and the typical two-cornered hat. My father had on his white pugri, or turban. A few people from among the day's pilgrims would be brought to see him. Visitors from overseas were always welcome. At twelve noon, the hour before the communal meal, he would stand up and in a slow procession head for the temple across the grounds. His bearing
upright, his face beaming, his right hand would be raised to confer blessings. As I watched this weekly transformation from the edge of the crowd, a chill would fall upon me. No longer did my princedom have any appeal for me. As he moved, people touched the hem of his clothes, they murmured prayers, their eyes filled with the utmost devotion. How could I possibly become worthy of all that?

The Saheb would go to a cushioned, silk-covered seat in the little temple and sit down facing the congregation that had gathered. He would raise his right hand in a benediction. And then he would speak, gently, wisely to an eager audience. He might begin by singing a ginan: “Tell me, soul, what / brought you to this earth?”

Each time I would realize anew that my father was a part of something bigger than I could comprehend, something that nevertheless I was required to become.

“Okay, Kaniya, you know a lot, what will become of that stump Pran Nath?”

A cruel remark, but Harish, who had uttered it, was not one for niceties. A loudmouth, he had recently begun making vulgar remarks about women, and had learned a repertoire of hand motions. And so he exploded with his trademark guffaw when I played along and remarked sagaciously, “Pran Nath the stump will marry the pox woman.” He stopped laughing to make the inevitable lewd observation.

Pran Nath had caught our attention because a tall, elderly, and educated-looking woman in a yellow sari had told him off for parking close to her feet and touching her. Having heard us, with a departing glare he swung off to the pavilion where, as I watched apprehensively, he reported me to Bapu-ji.

A minute later a young man came over to tell me, “The Saheb calls you.”

As I went over, pushed on my way by my sniggering friends, my father said, “What you said was not nice. Ask Pran Nath's pardon.”

I looked down at the gloating man and said, “I made an error, Ji, forgive me.”

He swung off, satisfied. But the woman with the pocks on her face had
come forward, encouraged by onlookers. Her name was Mariam, and Bapu-ji instructed me, “Ask Mariam Bai's forgiveness too.” So I asked her forgiveness.

“It's nothing, see?” she cooed, running her hand over the pustules on her face, lovingly, as though caressing a baby. Suddenly, cunningly she grabbed my right hand; I stiffened. Watched by my father and the others, their looks benign but curious, I relented, and next my hand was on her face, guided over each pustule, each revolting clinging larval flab of soft pulpy flesh. She released me with a grin, and I hurried off to our home, barely overhearing someone sing my praise as the true heir of Pirbaag.

I was in tears, my hands trembling. It was as if I had caught the pox myself. Ma had followed me in with concern, and taking me to the bathroom she scrubbed my hands and also my face—for in my grief I had put it in my hands.

For many days I couldn't get the experience out of my head, and even months later the thought of my hand caressing Mariam Bai's pustules made me shudder.

In my humiliation I stayed inside, rested, had my lunch and chatted with my mother. Only much later, when the sounds outside had abated, did I return to the shrine, an exercise book in my hand. My friends had gone; most of the visitors had gone. The pavilion was empty, my father having gone to his library to study and rest.

There came the sound of children playing; then Tarzan's jungle cry, “Aaah-aaah!” as Mansoor, emerging from behind Jaffar Shah's large grave, pounced on an opponent. Other kids arrived, and mock fights broke out among the graves of our ancestors. But Dharmik Master, our religious instructor, was at hand; he had been awaiting me. With a few light cuffs he had the younger boys seated before him, reasonably calm. Lessons began. Except for my mishap, this was the routine every Saturday.

Dharmik Master was actually a printer and binder, bringing in jobs from Goshala and sometimes from Ahmedabad. Bapu-ji used him to repair or reprint old books. When he arrived, all the children who remained in the compound were commanded to sit before him near Jaffar Shah's grave. Master-ji would sing, he would explain; he would call on us to sing. And
since I was special, I was the first to be asked and expected to make no mistakes. All eyes would be upon me. But if I faltered, the teacher would smoothly sing along with me, saving me from the pit. After singing period, as he called it, he told stories. How a Pir Shah So-and-so, a descendant of our Pir Bawa, defeated the great guru Shankaracharya in debate; how another Pir Shah So-and-so stepped happily onto a great big tava, a wok filled with scorching sand, which torture the stern and puritanical Emperor Aurangzeb had prescribed to make the blasphemers of his kingdom recant; naturally it had no effect on our man. Jaffar Shah travelled all over India and went all the way to Tibet in a balloon, which was why he brought luck on travellers, and why the truck and bus drivers worshipped him. Stories to recall later, and to retell; but what effect could their magic have on happy creatures whose age itself confers magic? We all believed in miracles; they were all around us, so to speak. But somehow, when Master-ji related them, no one believed them. The kids sniggered. They winked at each other. By the end of the session someone's ear had been pulled, another had received a thuppad on the face; a third one was doing standupsitdown, holding his ears in humiliation.

Eventually the children would all be chased away, to wreak their mischief outside. The Saheb, my Bapu, having rested, would reappear. He would sit on his chair, ready to give audiences; and if no one else occupied his attention, his devoted followers would sit before him on the floor to receive his teaching.

I thought of him then as Socrates, about whom I had learned in school, or a sage from the Upanishads, which he liked to quote.